Showing results by author "Michael Blastland" in All Categories

Why does one smoker die of lung cancer but another live to 100? The answer is 'The Hidden Half' - those random, unknowable variables that mess up our attempts to comprehend the world. We humans are very clever creatures - but we're idiots about how clever we really are. In this entertaining and ingenious book, Blastland reveals how in our quest to make the world more understandable, we lose sight of how unexplainable it often is. The result - from GDP figures to medicine - is that experts know a lot less than they think.

A BBC Radio 4, three-part factual series, first broadcast on 23 March 2011. Michael Blastland presents The Story of Economics, and lays out the history of economic ideas, to understand why economics goes wrong and whether it can ever go entirely right.